Physical toy interfaces connected to surveillance software

They are creatures that can hear us and who can hear each other. They have microphones. They have graphical bodies that they can move around and they make sounds by moving their bodies in the same way as animals make sounds by moving their bodies. So these creatures can hear us and they can hear each other and they have a life span of about three minutes, and during that time they learn from their acoustic environment and try to model it and they try to work out what is going to happen. So initially they start off quite blank and then they build up models of what is in tandem based on material that is already in the colony. Then, once they accumulate enough they begin to play it and towards the end they incorporate new material only very slowly. So sometimes you will hear whole fragments transported from one creature to another. Sometimes it will be a call and response; it will be very clear, other times it will just slip slightly. So these creatures are quite complicated creatures but they have enough intelligence that they can build very simple expectations about the way the world works. They have very simple ideas of boredom, very simple ideas of what they should be paying attention to.

Marc Downie is working on interactive installation, interactive music, machine learning and computer graphics. He studied natural science and physics at Cambridge and media art at MIT and MIT's Media Lab.

Interviewed by Pau Waelder (co-director of Artactiva), at Ars Electronica 2003

Watch the video interview [YouTube - 12 min]